Jill Abramson is worried.
Amid a string of relatively gentle complaints directed at her longtime employer, the erstwhile New York Times editor zeroed in on ascendant “narcissism” in the newsroom. The Daily Beast probed Abramson over a tweet she sent this week critiquing the Times for missing signs that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was poised to topple Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y. In a compelling email back-and-forth with the Beast, Abramson unburdened herself, listing the Times’ decision to be the subject of a new television show among several complaints.
Decrying the program’s intention “to focus on personal feelings and experiences of NYT journalists covering news,” Abramson wrote, “More narcissism: It’s always about us. Yikes. Distance is part of journalism’s discipline.”
After three years as executive editor of the Times, where she had already worked for more than a decade, Abramson was ousted in 2014. Now a Harvard professor, Abramson rolled her experiences on campus into a broader observation about the direction of journalism. “From four years of teaching at Harvard, so many of my students are interested in journalism, but they mostly want to write first-person, highly personal narratives about themselves. That may reflect their age. But I think there’s too much of that in journalism. It’s not about us. It’s about the world, and covering the world,” she wrote.
Social media has become increasingly baked into the work of journalists, tempting and encouraging reporters to wade into the waters of the personal on professional platforms. The confluence of social media’s rise and millennials’ entrance into the industry does gradually seem to be shifting these norms. The media has never been more interested in the media than right now — and for some good reasons. But given the signs that papers like the Times are still missing rising populist sentiments in their own backyards, none of the introspection seems to be delivering the necessary “course correction” Abramson has identified.
